Schools today are under pressure to provide students with the maximum opportunity for as broad as possible an education. At the same time, the school environment and classroom are relatively safe and protected, but also restrictive in terms of insulating students from the world in general. To strike a balance between safety and learning, teachers often elect to include excursions beyond the boundaries of the school. These field trips are designed to provide students with a practical learning experience to supplement the information they are expected to internalize within the classroom. To maximize the positive effects of this experience, the Western Australian Department of Education has created a policy document to divulge the specific requirements for student safety during such trips.

This is then also the stated background of the policy, in that any risk factors related to excursions outside the school premises need to mitigated in such a way...
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